l82 



A Breath from the Veldt 



buck, and pallah ; but during the four days of our stay I was particularly 

 unlucky : I never let my rifle off, except at a duiker, which I missed. All 

 the others, however, got something ; and Piet Landsberg, the first day he 



was out, fired at a leopard, three 

 koodoo bulls, and a waterbuck, but 

 without success, though unfortu- 

 nately wounding badly two of the 

 koodoos. Like myself, he was only 

 a beginner at spooring, and not only 

 lost his game but very nearly him- 

 self. One day the old man and I 

 were returning after a long day's 

 hunt, having only seen a few pallah, 

 when we came across a remarkable 

 tree close to the road by the river. 

 On its trunk was written a little 

 history, which told in so many 

 words some interesting details as 

 clearly as if they had been printed 

 there. 



We had been at the " Blauw 

 Ghat " (blue water-hole) at the Bubye 

 two days, when one morning Oom 

 Roelefs brother-in-law, Cornellis 

 Basadanote, turned up. He was a 

 splendid specimen of a man, and had 

 been a hunter all his days, his pres- 

 ent business being a combination of 

 hunter and wild -animal catcher. 

 He had come down the river to 

 beg some medicine for his son, who, 

 he said, was dying of fever. It was 

 difficult to prescribe for a man at 

 a distance when you did not know what condition he was in, so I decided to 

 accompany him and see his camp as well. A ride of two hours brought us 

 to a lovely spot amidst great trees overhanging a silvery stream. Here, on 

 a level plateau, with blue wreaths of smoke curling upward through the great 



NATURE S PROTEST 



The above tree is sketched direct from nature as it stands to-day 

 by the Bubye River, and the marks on its trunk tell their own story 

 as plainly as if they had been printed underneath. Some time in 1891 

 two enterprising Englishmen had reached this spot on the Bubye, and 

 in common with a good many vulgar people, they evidently considered 

 it necessary to carve their names on a tree, that all after-comers might 

 see them. At this part of the Bubye some time very shortly before 

 my arrival there had apparently been much game, which had induced the 

 usual pair or so of lions to follow in their wake and frequent their paths 

 to the water. There was consequently much spoor of these lions (in 

 this case an old lion and lioness) up and down the game track by which 

 the tree stands, and in one of their peregrinations the lion (or, perhaps, 

 the lioness) had stopped at this identical tree, and there had stood up 

 on his hind legs, and gone through the usual process of sharpening his 

 claws on the bark. Nature could not possibly have devised a neater or 

 more apt rebuke to the vulgarity of man than this. 



